Prince documentary series cancelled by estate
While Netflix had been working on a documentary series about Prince for a long time, the project has now been cancelled. The series, directed by Ezra Edelman, will now no longer be released as Prince’s estate reclaims control of archival footage.
The story of Netflix’s attempt to release a Prince documentary is a long one. For a year, the project has been stuck in a legal limbo between the streaming platform and Prince’s estate. Notably, the late musician was incredibly private about his personal life and notoriously hated contracts or foreign bodies, like record labels or production studios, meddling in his work.
Since his tragic death in 2016, this has remained largely the case, and very little has come out about his life such as personal videos or photography catalogues. Fans seldom, if ever, get a look behind the scenes of Prince’s life, even as his estate releases music from the artist’s reportedly vast vault which would have been a void filled by the documentary.
“The Prince Estate and Netflix have come to a mutual agreement that will allow the estate to develop and produce a new documentary featuring exclusive content from Prince’s archive,” Prince’s official account shared as a statement, adding, “As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”
Seemingly, Prince’s estate retains control of the vault of footage the documentary likely would’ve used which has prevented the project from going forward. Writing on X, Prince’s estate shared a video stating “the vault has been freed,” and including the hashtag “Free.”
Upon seeing the first cut, the estate previously claimed it was “sensationalized” and filled with “dramatic” factual inaccuracies about his life.
Having initially been granted extensive access to the artist’s archive, Ezra Edelman has been quietly working on the project for a long time. In the first draft of their deal, he was requested to create a six-hour series. However, Edelman reportedly delivered nine hours of footage, a violation of the agreement that presumably enabled the estate to withhold music rights, perhaps giving them a way out of a project they no longer wanted to happen.
It’s unclear yet if or when Prince’s estate may create their own documentary, but it’s certain that the world will never see Netflix’s.